The Price of Freedom Is Vigilance

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice released two reports: one that exonerated Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the killing an 18-year-old unarmed black youth, Michael Brown, and a separate 105-page report on its investigation into Ferguson’s police department following Brown’s tragic death. The second report was disturbing.

Here’s why:

Among its findings: In Ferguson, a city of 21,000 residents, 16,000 had outstanding arrest warrants for minor violations like jaywalking.

In order to pay for the local court system (and not motivated by public safety), the city of Ferguson engaged in “illegal and harmful practices” of charging residents high court fees and fees on nonviolent offenses (like jaywalking). Some people have come to refer to this practice as “taxation by citation.”

According to outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, “this (Civil Rights Division) investigation found a community that was deeply polarized; a community where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents.”

Ferguson’s black citizens accounted for 95 percent of all jaywalking fines and warrants. The DOJ investigation discovered Ferguson’s African-American residents were targets for minor offenses — basically to pad the city budget.

In an age when voters are supposed to have control over their public officials, Ferguson’s black residents — 67 percent of its population — have none. The DOJ uncovered city emails (originated and circulated by Ferguson police officers and even court employees) that demeaned African-Americans.

When a city official can send an email about President Obama that says he’ll be gone soon because, “What black man holds a steady job for four years” — well, I’m afraid we haven’t progressed beyond the march in Selma and the civil rights movement as much as we might like to think.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles acknowledged in a press conference that changes are underway and also that one of the Ferguson city employees involved in the offensive emails has been terminated, with two still under investigation. Well, that’s a start. But much more needs to be done.

Mayor Knowles said that several new initiatives are already taking place in the city, including the hiring of an African-American woman as a correctional officer and the creation of an explorer program with local children and a civilian oversight board.

How long will it take for us to treat every citizen with dignity and respect? How long?

The DOJ report highlights the complicated history of race relations in the United States, just at a time when our problems in that area are very evident. But, then, that’s hardly a coincidence, since problems with race relations are constantly part of our lives in America. And if those problems are not always evident to all people, that merely highlights the problem.

The killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner last year saw attention finally focused on the problem of police treatment of communities of color. And here we are in 2015 reminded of how those communities are still being mistreated some 50 years after the passage of laws that prohibit all forms of discrimination.

Just as the streets of our cities have recently been full of people protesting police treatment in the Brown and Garner cases, the 50th anniversary of one of the most iconic rights marches of all time arrives this weekend with the commemoration of 1965’s Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights.

On March 7, 1965, 600 voting rights marchers were brutally attacked by policeman and law enforcement officers using billy clubs and tear gas in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

With the renewed impetus of the Brown and Garner cases, the Annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee in 2015 will be more than ever a call to use the lessons of past struggle to move forward in the future.

Let’s hope the DOJ report sparks some change. It has taken a long time to see progress being made in the area of civil rights, voting rights and “liberty and justice for all.” So, let’s see how far we’ve come, and let’s go further.

Until then, we must march on until freedom is finally won all over the United States of America.